driftfleet | (no subject)

Who: Makie and you guys
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Marsiva
When: This evening

[Makie wakes feeling more relaxed and a lot clearer than she has in a long time. It's enough that, for a time, she just stays in bed. An odd bed, a very soft one. Given she'd spent a year sleeping on the floor-- and her last memories-- it's a luxury she indulges in.

She knows this is an unfamiliar place. She just doesn't care.

Eventually she pushes the coverlet back and stands, collects her shawl from the stand nearby and settles it across her shoulders. Her clothes are clean and in good repair. That's interesting. The shamisen is there and she picks it up, freezing for a moment as she registers the difference in weight. Notes it, dismisses it. She doesn't...need it here, does she?

It's not until she explores that she begins to feel the first confusion. This is not at all what she would have expected, alien and unfamiliar walls and machinery. Not only that, the more she exerts herself the more the heaviness in her lungs becomes more pronounced, and eventually she sinks into a nearby chair to get her breath back. She's better than she was by far, but she's still sick. She shouldn't still be sick. Surely.

All right, then.

After a while, unnerved by the silence and emptiness of the place, she begins playing her shamisen. If she'd explored a little more, she might have found others, but she's tired. If there are others, they can come to her instead.]

---------

[Eventually, a broadcast. It's short and to the point and delivered in a thin, tired voice by a Japanese woman in a kimono with exceedingly pale skin.]

I understand this is no longer Adstringendum. [She still stumbles over that name, even after a year. Too many damn consonants. And then her tone turns wry.] It is also very clearly not the land of the dead, and this communicator is... familiar.

I apologise as you've no doubt heard these questions many times before, but I should like to know where I am and why.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Hm... on the other end of the video feed is a bored looking blonde girl. The way that her chin is propped up by her hand, and she seems to be slouching makes her look very small in the video feed. Her expression doesn't change when she finally talks]

You're on a space reality show made by assholes. It's not as glamorous as it sounds.

[The hair colour has Makie look sharply at Sarah for a moment, but after one searching look she shakes her head slowly.]

It rarely is. Though I'm afraid this is my first encounter with space reality shows. [Leia has told her enough she can sort through what that's even meant to mean, though five minutes ago you'd have gotten a blank stare.]

We're here for their entertainment. Are we required to do anything in particular?

[hm, Sarah takes note of how well she rolled with that]

Not really. The rumor is that if we cause drama we get paid more, so you can go get into a fist-fight. Might help your chances.

But before we get off the topic... you came from some other crazy place like this one?

[...lmao she's not sure what's less tasteful to her, the idea of starting a fight for funsies or her initial thought that she'd been dragged here for, uh. Sex. (Yeah, Makie has issues.)

Still, putting the whole notion of drama (?) aside, she gives a thoughtful hum.]

I suppose I did. Though the land I just came from doesn't seem nearly so bizarre as a space reality show. [And we had psychotic evil clouds and everything. There are just some things Makie understands better.] It was a ruin. People weren't taken there by force, they just accidentally fell in.

[she raises a skeptical eyebrow]

Just "fell in"? What does that mean, you fell in a hole?

Not quite. The people that originally lived in that world accidentally destroyed it and caused cracks in the universe... which in turn drew other people in.

To be honest, I'm not sure how it worked. I do know that nobody was keeping us there, however.

[Not like here.]

Huh. So you got stolen away from some heroic mission to save all universes?

[Wait what. That gets more of a startled reaction than the news she's shifted worlds.]

...no. There was no heroic mission. [Should there have been? But logic already gives her an answer.] What was wrong couldn't be fixed, and the cracks were small. We were just trapped and living out our lives as best we could.

Oh. [she resists the urge to say more, but the tone lingers-- 'lame']

Did you guys have like... food, water, shelter, all that jazz?

[Excuse you Makie likes 'lame'. It's nice to have breathing space!]

We made our own, but there were the materials to work with. At first. Recently, there hasn't been much of anything at all. The waters were poisoned and the animals became rabid.

[So shelter while they starved to death, hooray. Or... coughed themselves to death, in Makie's case.]

[sarah is incredibly ruuude with a capital R. But geez, that's a rough story. She makes a slight face the mention of rabid animals]

Geez, that sounds horrible.

Mm. People were dying.

[She says it absently, like discussing the weather.]

I'm told it improved after my... after I was brought here. So I'm thankful for that.